


Well Met On A Rainy Day

by katajainen



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Rock Band, F/F, Fem!Bagginshield, Female Bilbo Baggins, Female Bilbo Baggins/Female Thorin Oakenshield, Female Thorin Oakenshield, Rain, Rule 63, Summer, directionally challenged Thorin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-31
Updated: 2017-08-31
Packaged: 2018-12-21 20:56:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11952480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katajainen/pseuds/katajainen
Summary: For Bilbo, a rainy day during the summer holiday seems the perfect reason to stay in bed. However, the circumstances do not work in her favour.A story about chance meetings, music, and venturing out into the rain.





	Well Met On A Rainy Day

**Author's Note:**

> For the Bagginshield Summer Surprise prompt:
> 
> "A rainy summer day sounds like a perfect excuse to stay in bed all day long, don't you agree?"
> 
> Thanks to [Saraste](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Saraste/pseuds/Saraste) for the beta and suggesting the band name!

_Tap. Tap. Tap-peti-tap,_ went the drops on the windowsill outside. Bilbo took a last look through the water-striped glass and flopped back against the pillow. ‘A rainy day, and nowhere to be,’ she mused. ‘The perfect excuse not to get up, don’t you think?’

Gollum didn’t answer, if you didn’t count the way it burrowed deeper beneath the quilt, until the only thing you could see of the cat was the tip of one pearly-grey ear. Bilbo let him be, and reached for the pile of books on the nightstand.

Spending the day in bed worked, with a few forays into the kitchen for tea and snacks, until about four in the afternoon, when Bilbo started thinking about dinner, and was none too gently reminded that there were more important matters to address.

She was fresh out of cat food. Not a single tin more left.

Gollum pushed his empty bowl across the tiled floor with a scraping sound that set Bilbo’s teeth on edge, then wove between her legs, emitting a plaintive nasal meow. ‘I know,’ she sighed. ‘I know. Should have bought enough last time, you greedy little bugger.’ She glared at the fine lacy sheets of water she would have been very happy to admire through a windowpane. ‘I’ll just nip down to Holman’s, shall I?’

Blessedly, it had stopped raining by the time Bilbo started walking back up the hill, weighed down by a large bag of groceries for both two- and four-legged appetites, and taking care to step around the occasional puddle. Every now and then there was a wet swooshing sound as a car went past.

Then one took a corner a bit too fast, a bit too close to the sidewalk, and the water shot up in an arc, spattering Bilbo from the waist down even as she jumped back. She cursed.

The car, a dark blue van, stopped and inched slowly back. The driver craned their head from the open window.

‘Are you all right?’ The woman was roughly of an age with Bilbo, with deep olive skin and chiseled features beneath dark brows. Her hair hung in a heavy braid over one shoulder.

‘I’m wet, thank you very much,’ Bilbo snapped, shaking water off the end of her sleeve. ‘And I wouldn’t be, if you’d minded where you were going!’

‘Excuse me, but you can hardly expect me to dodge every puddle!’

‘Every puddle? That thing is the size of my dining room table and you sped right into it!’

The driver paused, pinching the bridge of her nose. ‘Look, Mrs. Dining-room-table, I haven’t got all day. _What_ do you want? That I pick up your laundry bill?’

Bilbo wrinkled her nose. ‘No, but you could consider apologizing.’

‘Fine. I’m sorry. Good day.’ And with that, the woman rolled up the window and drove off.

‘“Good day”? Who does she thinks she is to say “good day” to me?’ Bilbo muttered to herself as she walked, but if truth be told, she thanked her stars of the small saving graces of plastic bags and a warm August day.

She was ready to forget about the whole thing when another dark blue van passed her. It turned left at the corner, and Bilbo thought nothing of it; blue was such a common colour. Only, the same thing happened yet again a couple of minutes later, and Bilbo frowned as she watched the van slowly disappear around the block, turning right this time.

By the third time she was ready for it. When the van passed her, almost at crawling speed now, she walked right to it, and rapped at the driver’s side window with the handle of her rolled-up umbrella.

‘Now what do you think you’re doing?’ she demanded as soon as the glass rolled down, ‘Following me around?’

‘What?’ The woman leaned her bare elbow on the bottom frame of the open window and glared at her. ‘ Why would I even bother?’

‘Well how about you tell–’ Suddenly Bilbo noticed the half-folded map resting against the wheel. ‘You’re lost,’ she realized.

‘Hardly.’

‘Then why else would you drive past me three times in less than ten minutes?’ When no answer was forthcoming, Bilbo sighed. She could not avoid asking, not in good conscience. ‘Do you need directions?’

Blue eyes looked her over slowly, taking in the hiking sandals, the short red linen pants, the flower-embroidered blouse, the brown curls that went mad in a moist weather. ‘You don’t look like someone who would know where The Green Dragon is.’

Bilbo laughed. ‘The Green Dragon? Don’t be ridiculous. It’s just down the road: go straight ahead then turn right at the third–’ she stopped suddenly. ‘How about I just walk with you? It’s but a stone’s throw from here.’

‘No, absolutely not, there’s no need–’

‘Nonsense. Come along.’ Bilbo took off briskly, and from the corner of her eye, saw the van following her at a walking pace.

The Green Dragon was right where it had been since before Bilbo was old enough to get in: back to the river, front to the Bywater Road. The woman in the van took one look at the neon sign sporting the club’s grinning namesake, unlit this early in the day, then nodded to Bilbo with a curt ‘thank you’.

'My pleasure,’ Bilbo replied drily, and turned to go. But only moments later she heard running footsteps behind her, followed by an insistent ‘Wait!’

She was tall, taller than Bilbo had realized. Standing there in a sleeveless black tee, faded jeans and work boots, she easily had ten inches on Bilbo, if not more. Dark inked lines wound in geometric patterns down both of her arms. She held out something to Bilbo.

‘Thank you, truly,’ she said. ‘And my apologies for the earlier.’ Without waiting for an answer, the woman turned on her heel and went back to the van.

Bilbo turned the piece of paper in her hands and unfolded it. A guest ticket for a gig in the Dragon, dated for that same evening. So the woman was with one of the bands, that made sense. The support was a local band: The Bounders had been touring the summer weekends for years now – Bilbo knew one of the band members from his respectable wintertime day job. The headliner though… for the life of her, Bilbo couldn’t make out the name – someone had gone for the illegible style of calligraphy. It looked like it started with an ‘r’, and possibly ended in ‘l’. Maybe.

When she looked up, the van was gone, probably to the service entrance around the back. She stuffed the ticket into the bag with the groceries, went home and resolved to think no more of it.

* * *

By the time Bilbo got to The Green Dragon later that evening, The Bounders were already halfway through their set. But they weren’t the unknown quantity, so it hardly mattered, and at least there wasn’t much of a line to the bar.

She was curious, she had told herself earlier, when she had turned the ticket in her hands after dinner. She was _bored_ , she had decided a while later, digging through the closets for something to wear with the jeans. That she was itching to get back to work by day ten of her summer holiday was not a good sign, she decided as she unearthed the red leather vest and slipped it over her white shirt. It was lucky you never buttoned these things anyway – Bilbo was the first to admit she was not the same shape as… well, too long ago.

Before long, the mystery band was setting up. Bilbo perched on a bar stool and craned her neck. There. The woman with the van was standing behind a keyboard, talking to a bald tattooed fellow with the height and breadth of an industrial freezer. Then someone tapped the mike, and there was a whine from the speakers.

‘Sorry about that,’ said a pleasant male voice. Bilbo turned her attention to the front of the stage, and the young fellow with a blond mane that would make many a lion proud. ‘Good evening, Green Dragon!’ he called. ‘Everyone got a drink of their choice?’ This got a mixed chorus of ‘ayes’ and ‘nays’. ‘Well, whether you do or not, Ravenhill is ready to give you a show!’ This got applause. Bilbo quirked an eyebrow at the name. Sure, you _could_ imagine that the squiggle on the ticket spelled that. ‘Tonight, we’ve got yours truly, Fili Durinul, on the lead guitar and vocals–’ the young blond sketched a bow over his instrument– ‘my brother Kili on the bass guitar – don’t tell him any bass player jokes, he invented half of those himself –’

‘A solid mithril truth!’ the scruffy dark-haired youngster put in.

‘Don’t mind him. Then there’s Dwalin Fundinul, to give us a beat–’ the huge man gave a sharp drumroll from behind his set– ‘or a beating, so behave.’ Cue laughter from the audience. ‘And last but not least: the one and only Thorin Oakenshield on the keyboard and harp, to grant us the genuine Ravenhill sound!’

So that was her name, Bilbo mused and took a sip from her drink. Thorin. And then the opening chords of the first song ran through the Dragon.

‘ _Far over the Misty Mountains rise_  
_Leave us standing upon the heights_  
_What was before, we see once more_ _  
Is our kingdom a distant light…_ ’

The young singer had a pleasant, strong tenor, and Bilbo soon found herself trying to catch the tune, oddly familiar as it seemed.

She was caught off guard at the start of the second verse, when the harp cut steel-bright and clear over the bass and guitar and drumbeat. The melody tugged at something deep within her, like a memory long forgotten. When people around her joined in on the chorus, she knew. She had forgotten how it felt like, to hear music brought alive in the now, not repeated from a machine-made copy, the sheer presence of a sound that vibrated in the air only for a vanishing moment, and could never be recreated exactly the same. How it would make a heart beat faster, would make a mind feel bolder. Her feet moved to the beat and took her closer to the stage.

Bilbo saw the moment she spotted her, and smiled in delight at the look of surprise on Thorin’s face. She was beginning to like the shape of this evening.

What the lead singer had said of ‘the unique Ravenhill sound’ rang true; it was no single thing: not the melodies that rang like folk songs from somewhere Bilbo couldn’t quite place on a map, not the fiddle and harp and the solid underpinning of bass riffs and drumbeat, not even the songs themselves, even if Bilbo wished to see the lyrics in print. What got under her skin was more than the sum of its parts, and it had been years since the last time she had been so taken with anything at the first taste.

Eventually, the set run to a close. Encores were demanded and given. And then there was the very last one. Thorin came to the stage alone, harp held by a strap over her shoulder. She pulled out a stool, and a single spotlight settled on her like on command. ‘The last song of the evening,’ she said, ‘is dedicated to the kindness of strangers.’ And for the space of a breath, Bilbo felt pinned in place by her searching eyes.

When she started to play, Bilbo took a double-take. She saw the harp, it’s body a graceful shimmering arch of pale gold, and Thorin’s fingers dancing on the glittering strings. What she heard was a blues guitar twang. And Thorin’s soft voice as she started to sing.

‘ _Far over the misty mountains cold_  
_To dungeons deep and caverns old_  
_We must away ere break of day_ _  
To seek the pale enchanted gold..._ ’

It was like hearing a different take on the opening number, and yet it wasn’t. This was a song pared down to its bones: one woman’s compelling voice, one pair of hands on sonorous strings, honing a simple melody and verse until it shone like a razor’s edge, like the bright heart of a diamond.

Her voice was rich and smooth as finest velvet, and rough and jagged as steel rusted over. And the fierce sad pride that wove through it all, verse after verse, made Bilbo shiver where she stood. This was an elegy to past glory, to loss and hope undaunted. A clarion call to make blood boil and tears fall, and it didn’t matter if those two coincided.

Then it was over. The minstrel bowed and took her leave and the spell was broken.

Dazed, Bilbo let the crowd carry her towards the bar. When she finally had a pint of the Dragon’s own soft brown ale in her hand, and was almost settled back into her own skin again, a rough voice suddenly addressed her, and nearly made her spit her drink.

‘You’re the lass who stopped Thorin from carting our gear halfway across the county?’

Bilbo turned to look at the mountain of a man who loomed behind her barstool. ‘What?’ she managed, then held up a finger when recognition kicked in. ‘Wait, the drummer for Ravenhill? David, no…. Dwalin something?’

‘Dwalin Fundinul.’ Bilbo shook a solemnly offered hand that felt easily twice the size of her own. ‘And thank you. We should have known better than to send her in without someone else to read the map.’

‘Hey, I said it was an emergency!’ That was the lead singer, Bilbo forgot his name for the moment.

‘Well, anyone who’s willing to put up with you for a night counts as an emergency!’

And if anyone had bothered to ask Bilbo, she’d said that the second young ruffian didn’t look old enough to drink, but judging by the pint in his hand, the Dragon’s management believed different. Said pint was also in a serious danger of overflowing when its owner dodged an elbow to the ribs.

‘Don’t mind him. I’m Fíli–’ the blond held out his hand– ‘and that’s Kíli,’ he said, with a nod towards his darker band-mate– ‘Thanks for rescuing Aunt Thorin from her own sense of direction.’

‘She’d never told us – only we drove past when you were walking her here,’ Kíli snickered. ‘Thought we would have to wait for her, you see.’

‘Kíli, that joke was old before you were born.’

And somehow Bilbo had been expecting for the fourth band member to complete the set.

‘Are these louts bothering you?’ the harpist – Thorin – asked, edging in between Fíli and Dwalin, handing the latter one of the beer bottles she’d been carrying.

‘No, not in the slightest,’ Bilbo replied, ‘but,’ she added with a touch of mischief, ‘I do believe I never quite caught your name, earlier today.’

Thorin had the good grace to look embarrassed. ‘My apologies. I was pressed for time. Thorin Oakenshield, at your service.’

‘Bilbo Baggins at yours,’ Bilbo returned the formal greeting with a smile. Thorin had a nice firm handshake. Warm hands, too. ‘Thank you for the invite – I had a wonderful time.’

‘I didn’t think you’d come.’

‘Because I “don’t look like someone who’d know where The Green Dragon is”?’ Bilbo quipped, sketching the air quotes with her free hand. ‘Please. I had to – I couldn’t make heads or tails of your band name, and it was killing me with curiosity.’

Thorin laughed. ‘You’re not the first one to say that. It was Balin who designed the logo – Dwalin’s brother – and he had some sort of calligraphic phase back in the day. I suppose we thought it looked nice enough.’

‘It’s intriguing, if not anything else.’

‘That it is.’ Thorin, Bilbo was rapidly discovering, really had the most beautiful smile. ‘But you really did enjoy the show?’

‘Yes! I– that last song really caught me. Something so simple, and yet so moving. I felt– felt ready to fight and burst into tears, but at the same time, if that makes any sense. And you have such a lovely singing voice,’ Bilbo finished, slightly out of breath, and took a deep gulp of her drink.

‘Thank you,’ said Thorin, and Bilbo could hear her smiling. ‘It’s an old song, traditional, from where Dwalin and I grew up. I don’t know if you noticed, but the first song of the set was a somewhat different version of it – Fili’s take on the same theme, to be precise.’

‘It was? I thought it sounded similar!’

‘You have sharp ears.’ And as she leaned closer, Bilbo noticed for the first time the silver threading through Thorin’s dark hair, and a thought came unbidden into her head that it made her look regal somehow. ‘There’s a story there, but it’s not a happy one, and I’d rather not sour the mood.’

‘I’ll take your word for it,’ Bilbo said. ‘But you know what really surprised me? About your music?’ she added, changing the subject, ‘I never knew you actually could electrify a harp, much less that it could sound like that!’

‘Don’t ask about harps if you’re not up for a lecture, though,’ Fíli put in, and for a minute there, Bilbo had utterly forgotten they had company. ‘She builds her own, you see.’

‘You do? That sounds fascinating; do tell me more.’

And there was a hint of that smile again, not the true dazzling thing, but a definite softening of the bright blue eyes, the finely shaped mouth quirking up at one corner. ‘I would be happy to,’ said Thorin.

Bilbo didn’t pay attention to the others leaving, but they must have done so at some point, because Thorin had secured a seat next to Bilbo’s that she was pretty certain Dwalin had earlier been sitting in, and there had been no interjections from the band’s youngsters for quite some time now, either.

Thorin, it turned out, not only built custom-made harps, but gave lessons _and_ composed music on order.

‘For TV, games, commercials, that sort of thing,’ she said. ‘It makes for a piecemeal living, all told, but it’s a living.’

‘ _And_ you play in a band,’ Bilbo pointed out, ‘what’s that again, a hobby?’

‘More or less,’ Thorin shrugged. ‘For years, I thought Ravenhill dead and buried. Then the boys grew up – Fíli and Kíli, that is – and they kept nagging at us to get the old thing on the road again, and here we are.’

‘I think it’s a good thing you are; I’d hate to have missed the chance of hearing you play. But wait, you said “again”?’

‘Well, back in the day, I used to be where Fíli is now: lead vocals, front of the band. Then we had cousin Dain at the bass, Gloin – another cousin – at the guitar. We were convinced that we were going places. Only then–’ Thorin stopped to down the last of her beer– ‘only then Dain’s father had a stroke, and he suddenly had the family business fall into his hands. We tried with a replacement for a time, but it never quite worked out, so we let the whole thing go.’

‘So,’ Bilbo mused, ‘two of your cousins in the band. And Dwalin–’

‘Another cousin. And Fíli and Kíli are my sister-sons. A family effort, you could call it. Maybe it explains why I never got around to starting one of my own. Family, that is.’ Thorin said with wry smile.

‘Well, me neither – if you don’t count the cat.’

‘I think that would depend on the cat. Enlighten me.’

So Bilbo told her about Gollum, his fearsome appetite and how it had contributed to her accidental meeting with Thorin. She talked about her work at the publishing house, and then, tentatively at first, about the three novels she had written, the fourth that was still unfinished, and her growing collection of rejection letters. More drinks were bought, Thorin complimented on quality of local brewing, and they got to discussing books, and traveling, and music, and it felt sooner rather than later when the last orders were called.

It had started to rain again, and Bilbo stared in dismay at the water bouncing off the cobbles in front of the club. She’d left her umbrella at home.

‘We’ll go through the back,’ Thorin said behind her. ‘I have an umbrella in the van.’

The van was, indeed, still at the back of the Dragon. ‘We’re staying at the B&B next door,’ Thorin explained.

‘Practical,’ Bilbo said, and made to take the umbrella, but Thorin held back.

‘I thought– that is, would you mind if I walked you home?’

‘What, afraid I steal your umbrella?’

‘Maybe,’ Thorin grinned, and Bilbo grinned back, a warmth on her cheeks that was not of the drink. ‘Or maybe I’m simply not ready to call it a night yet.’

Water tapped on the umbrella above them, streetlights cast a golden glow on the wet cobbles, and their arms kept brushing against each other in the snug space under the shared umbrella until Bilbo finally slipped her hand into Thorin’s. Thorin’s fingers wound between hers like they were made to fit, and when Bilbo glanced up, Thorin looking right back at her made her tingle all the way to the tips of her toes. It had been a long time, that she knew, but confusticate her, she hadn’t realized it had been _too damn long_. They walked the rest of the way in a warm hopeful silence.

Then they stood at the doorstep. ‘Call me,’ Thorin said, and handed her a business card. Bilbo frowned at it. ‘ _Lonely Mountain Harps,_ ’ it read, ‘ _Custom-built harps / Lessons / Soundtrack and audio composition._ ’

‘I only have the one number, both for business and personal,’ Thorin confessed, running a hand through her hair. ‘A bad habit, I am aware.’

Bilbo smiled slowly. ‘And which would I be, if I called you? Business or pleasure?’

‘A pleasure, definitely.’ And she had no right to make Bilbo weak at the knees with only the tone of her voice.

Light from Bilbo’s door lantern reflected on Thorin’s eyes and gilded the silver in her hair. Rain danced softly on the cobbles around them. There was a time when you could wait. And there was a time you seized your chance with both hands and hoped. Bilbo took hold of Thorin’s coat lapels and tugged gently.

‘Come here.’

It was a soft kiss to begin with. Thorin’s free arm wound around Bilbo’s waist, drawing her closer, and amidst all the night that was heavy with falling water and dark with cloud, they held all the bright warmth in the world under a single black umbrella.

Then a questing tongue-tip ran along Bilbo’s upper lip, and she made an open-mouthed gasp at the tingling, sparkling sensation. Thorin, it seemed, took this as an invitation. It changed then, the kiss: what had felt like a standalone track now had the rhythm and beat of a prelude, and Bilbo found she preferred that. She hooked one leg behind Thorin’s knee, and wondered idly if she could hold up her full weight. She looked like she could. She felt like she could. Bilbo felt like she would very much like to find out.

It was then the umbrella tipped, just enough to pour a jet of cold water down Bilbo’s right leg. She squealed, then started to laugh. ‘Look at us fools: not enough sense to go in from the rain!’ But they stayed where they were just a little while longer, giggling and trading lazy kisses, until Bilbo disentangled enough to fish the keys from her purse.

Gollum, it turned out, did not appreciate an extra two-legged bed companion, but no-one listened to his complaints. They had a far better use of their time. Namely, discovering the best way to spend a rainy summer’s night.

**Author's Note:**

> A note about the songs:

> 
> Fili's song is Neil Finn's 'Song of the Lonely Mountain', and Thorin's is 'Misty Mountains', i.e. the song from the book/movie that they sing in Bag End.
> 
> And for what it's worth, I imagine the famous Ravenhill sound being something between Clannad and Cruachan (and no, I don't see Thorin as Moya Brennan, despite obvious parallels).
> 
> ETA: almost forgot to give credit where it's due: my take on Thorin here is heavily indebted to Rutobuka's incomparable fem!bagginshield story ['The Service'](http://archiveofourown.org/works/9268445/chapters/21006878). Go read it if you haven't already.
> 
> ETA vol. 2: I wrote a sequel! Read it [here!](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16246127/chapters/37981442)


End file.
